Posted
by
kdawson
on Tuesday June 22, 2010 @02:27AM
from the nothing-new-under-the-sun dept.

An anonymous reader writes "If just 1% of the Sahara Desert were covered in concentrating solar panels it would create enough energy to power the entire world. That's a powerful number, and the European Union has decided to jump on its proximity to the Sahara in order to reap some benefits from the untapped solar energy beaming down on Northern Africa. Yesterday, European Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger announced that Europe will start importing solar energy from the Sahara within the next five years. It is estimated that the initiative will cost €400 billion ($495 billion). It's part of an EU goal to derive 20% of its power from renewable sources by 2020. From the article: 'The EU is backing the construction of new electricity cables, known as inter-connectors, under the Mediterranean Sea to carry this renewable energy from North Africa to Europe. Some environmental groups have warned these cables could be used instead to import non-renewable electricity from coal- and gas-fired power stations in north Africa.' To this the energy minister replied, essentially, 'Good question, we'll get back to you on that.'"

Tain't all sand. A lot of it is rock. And the normal way to move electricity is with transmission lines. Solved that problem about 8 decades ago.

What does give pause is that the Southwestern deserts of the US are about as well situated to deliver solar power as the Northern Sahara is. And it can be gotten out -- at least to Coastal California -- without crossing any really difficult barriers like the Mediterranean. At least one of everything solar has been built out around Barstow. But as far as I can tell very little of that generation capacity is actually in daily use.

The other problem is that hydro is the only renewable that can be used to trim baseline load and can be brought on line quickly when the wind stops blowing in Europe and/or starts blowing dust in North Africa. It's far from clear to me that Europe has really thought through all the problems associated with a large amount of solar/wind power generation and the difficulties of building reliable power distribution systems dependant on renewables.

I'm not against it, and I wish them luck. But Saharan solar may not be as easy as it looks.

>>What would happen if you installed hydroelectric dams at the openings to the Red sea, The straight of Gibraltar, and the Black sea; then used the whole Mediterranean as the power storage device, by pumping Atlantic ocean water into it at the straight of Gibraltar?

If you could dam the *Strait* of Gibraltar, then you wouldn't need to use it as a power storage device. The tidal power generated from it would be massive.

No, it doesn't have tides, but it still has nearly constant flow of water through the Straight. Saltier, denser water sinks and constantly flows out to the open ocean at depth. Surface evaporation pulls new water into the Mediterranean. Tidal flows are only occasionally powerful enough to disrupt this flow, and then only during brief periods. There have been a number of proposals over the years to install undersea impellers to capture this energy.

We've managed to cover well over 1% of Europe in buildings and asphalt... How difficult can it be to cover a desert with a micrometer thin layer of silicon (solar cells) or glass (mirrors)? Both use sand as the main raw material.

Also, the Sahara is mostly rocky, not sand dunes. If the Americans can build skyscrapers in the Nevada desert, then we can place lightweight thin semiconductors or mirrors on a similar surface with much less effort.

No. I’ve seen the plans. It’s Siemens (biggest German tech company btw.), providing them with HVDC [wikipedia.org] lines that go straight to some Pumped-storage hydroelectricity [wikipedia.org] dams/seas in the north, so that it works 24 hours a day.

I haven’t thought about the shifting dunes. Apart from them, it’s a really good concept.

First you got to produce the panels which are environmentally damaging. Then you need to store the electricity in batteries which are also bad for the environment. Not only this but both things need to eventually be replaced as well. Sure it doesn't use oil, doesn't mean it's any better for the environment though. Even if you go with the pump water rather then use batteries idea it still requires flooding huge areas of the environment.

depends on what it's made of.. You'd need something with a Mohs hardness rating [wikipedia.org] greater than that of refined silicon, or quartz. (Means a hardness score of greater than 7, which means something like Corundum [wikipedia.org] (Ruby/Sapphire/etc.) or synthetic diamond.

Synthetic corundum is actually quite clear when it is made without any colorizing impurities, and admits much more light spectra than does silicon. It has been used successfully as a semiconductor medium [compoundse...ductor.net], and is gaining traction as a process substrate in bulk.

Wait a minute, aren't you supposed to be part of the anti-PC words crowd? Do we have to call it "more renewable" energy now to make you happy? How about "Not Able To Be Burnt Up"(NATBBU?). The idea is to bootstrap ourselves using energy dense oil and coal to reach a level of tech where we can use the more plentiful energy sources which are more dispersed. Call me crazy, but working on a multi-century project to push back some of the desert, build some infrastructure in a wasteland*, and reaping huge long-term rewards sounds good to me; just because there are some wack jobs who do think that calling something "green" makes it good doesn't mean real critical thought can't be applied to a problem like this and have it result in a positive outcome.

* Don't go calling the north slope a wasteland. Do an assay of the biomass in a cubic meter of summer tundra versus the Sahara.

We are not talking about photovoltaics (i.e. the direct production of electricity from the sun), but about solar heat power plants.
The majority of power plants in this region will consist of nothing more than a whole bunch of mirrors to heat up some medium and a conventional turbine that uses the hot oil/water to generate electricity. This is a very simple technology, unlike solar panels used in photovoltaics.
Energy storage will be solved using molten salt or other liquids, but most definitely not electr

Really, the question is one of tradeoffs. If you use the land a few miles outside of a major city such as Cairo, the additional roads required should be minimal. Unlike Coal, you don't need to trek the material in constantly. Also, it's not like major construction is unheard of in Egypt, though I bet many basic construction materials are much cheaper there than in the UK. Considering the manpower that goes into an oil plant vs a solar plant, you should ha

NO. There is a very good reason they are asking this question [theecologist.org]. In Europe (Spain in particular [elmundo.es](Spanish)) diesel power has been passed off as renewable energy. The company get's to both sell dirty power AND collect on renewable energy subsidies. What's worse, nobody in the upper management or local politics has yet been prosecuted for the massive fraud - halls of power protecting their own it would appear.

So the question the environmentalists are calling it right. If this happens IN Europe, what can we expect when it's over in Africa unless there are strict transparent controls put in place? One thing is certain: There will always be Companies that will do almost anything to make a buck - we need to ask and address how the system can be abused before we invest public funds into it.

And to address the grandparents statement - I've always felt the notion that being critical of an idea somehow creates the responsibility to come up with a better one to be childish nonsense. It's just another way of saying "I don't like being criticized, so I'm not going to listen to you".

Environmentalist love to complain about new methods while offering up nothing in return.

So what do you call all those people who advocated switching to renewable power sources in an attempt to save the world? Surely they are environmentalists? "Don't use fossil fuels" they say, "choose solar, wind or wave power". Now that people start heeding that advice, it seems a bit rich to say they offer nothing in return. The problem is not that they don't offer alternatives, it is that people don't want to hear what they say because it all seems too hard or too expensive.

Environmentlists - what a stupid word, as if it being concerned about the environment was a mere political view, but let it be - we are not all the same. Just as with any other label, there are many sorts; some will always whine, whether it is about cables that unreasonably can transport electricity even if it comes from the wrong sort of powerplant, or whether it is about something else.

Some of us - most, I think - are well aware that it is better to reach an acceptable compromise than getting nowhere, bec

'The EU is backing the construction of new electricity cables, known as inter-connectors, under the Mediterranean Sea to carry this renewable energy from North Africa to Europe. Some environmental groups have warned these cables could be used instead to import non-renewable electricity from coal- and gas-fired power stations in north Africa.' To this the energy minister replied, essentially, 'Good question, we'll get back to you on that.'

To quote Firesign Theatre, it's a "power so great, it can only be used for good or evil!"

All seriousness aside, we need better energy conduits from these arid, sun-soaked regions. There is an abundance of solar energy waiting to be tapped in our deserts. Many, many, many human ills could be easily tackled by abundant energy. Sure, 1% of the Sahara can power our current usage. That fails to account for the fact that use increases as cost decreases. I'm sure if we managed to capture a much larger fraction of it, we'd put it to many unforseen uses, such as food synthesis, carbon sequestration, and so on.

I think it's high time we started tapping seriously into the energy arriving at earth daily. There is no energy shortage. There is only an energy collection and redistribution shortage.

I never meant to imply that solar was free. But, once solar capacity is built out and the transmission lines are in place, solar has quite a lot of potential to be cheaper than fossil fuels, particularly if fossil fuels are made artificially more expensive through carbon taxes. I don't have to mine or drill for solar power. I don't have ships, train cars and semis carting solar power all over the country. So, as solar capacity comes online, the overall cost of energy may drop, not because solar doesn't

An issue that needs to be solved is the storage of electricity, as sunlight is available only during the day. Although it is not addressed in the article, the issue stays. One proven technology is hydroelectric storage using dams in the Atlas or in continental Europe. But the capacity is not high enough. But in any way, the Desertec is definitely a alternative to fossil fuels.

Spain is already building large solar arrays (just drive around the country). It has also built a lot of wind farms. It's a mountainous country - contrary to what people who only ever fly to beach resorts might think, and gets a lot of wind as a result.

In the future I foresee a lot of the power generated by solar power in dusty countries being used by them to power desalination, rather than selling to rich countries who don't want to litter their landscapes. Water will be a bigger problem for them in the decades to come than lack of electricity.

...suddenly reflected a hell of a lot less heat back into the atmosphere, you're going to alter the climate drastically -- which may well reduce the amount of energy you have to tap, as it's likely to cause a regional cooling, which may result in greater cloud formation. I'd want to see the climatologists study the proposal. More to the point, is there an advantage in using solar panels over having the sunlight heat water (which is vastly more efficient) and then use the steam to generate electricity?

> If just 1% of the Sahara>...suddenly reflected a hell of a lot less heat back into the atmosphere, you're going to alter the climate drastically> -- which may well reduce the amount of energy you have to tap, as it's likely to cause a regional cooling,> which may result in greater cloud formation. I'd want to see the climatologists study the proposal.

You don't need to be a climatologist to study that, high school math easily does it!

Cross section of earth: > 3/4 * (40.000km)^2= 1.2e9 km^2Maximum area to be covered by solar cells in the desert for this project: 100km * 100km = 1e4 km^2

Increase in solar radiation absorbed by earth surface: less than 0.001%(assuming absorption in area covered by solar cells is doubled, and not even considering the fact that it is visible only during the day)

Increasing the absorbed energy by app. 1.3% will yield a temperature increase of 1K (300K -> 301K, radiated heat increases by fourth power of absolute temperature), so the 10.000km^2 of solar cells in the sahara will increase the temperature of the earth by less than a thousandth of a degree centigrade.

Wait a second. Doesn't the US have its own rocky deserts that are far, far safer and politically stabler from which to extract energy? Isn't the US the biggest economy in the world, *by far*? We should be the ones announcing these kinds of initiatives. This is the kind of infrastructure nation-building that would leap us to the forefront of alternative energy research, development, and exports, ensuring the growth of our economy for decades to come.

Now let's melt it:
It's a cold day, so we start at 10 degrees Celsius, i.e. we have to heat it by about 1075K and therefore need
"Energy to heat to melting point + Energy to overcome fusion enthalpy" = 4.3e13 Joules [google.com], that's 43TJ.

Let the HVDC line have a capacity of 1GW, which is entirely realistic and probably too low. That's 1GJ/s.
So, time to transfer the ene

I can't be the only one who is sick and tired of smug-emitting environmentalists.

As a conservationist, I find environmentalism offensive, and here's why: I support wind power. I support nuclear power. I support solar power. I support installation of generators in incinerators, and also would support investigation into building turbines into oil and gas fired central heating furnaces, to recoup as much of the energy as possible from the fossil fuels we do use.

I do not support hybrids for drivers of small econoboxes, because when you are a city dweller driving only 12K miles or fewer per year, you will not offset the additional resources needed to manufacture your hybrid over a conventional econobox - and what's more, you won't be saving any money either. If you drive 30K miles, however, your hybrid will probably offset the additional resources to manufacture in five years, and you will probably reap enough fuel savings to offset the hybrid financial costs in three years. So, for most people, hybrids are not smart money. You're better off getting a small diesel and getting 50+mpg. Besides, you don't save all that much fuel going from 35mpg to 45mpg combined.

I DO support the development of hybrid SUVs and large pickups, because going from 10mpg to 15mpg is a 50% improvement in economy, or going from 10mpg to 20mpg is a 100% improvement in economy. Instead of trying to push personal cars into impossibly-tighter emissions and economy standards, which cannot be attained without significantly lightening the cars by foregoing safety equipment like the European econoboxes do, we should be focused on the vehicles that really guzzle gas; Road tractors (often incorrectly called "semis"), large pickups, large SUVs, etc. - a LOT can be done to improve fuel mileage on all of those, and it doesn't even have to reduce utility or capacity. In fact, if implemented correctly, hybrid technology can actually increase hauling capacity when needed. However, if Congress has any business at all in setting fuel economy standards, it should focus on netting 50% and 100% savings on fuel consumption where it really goes to waste, and not putting the smack down on the little guy to net a 3% savings on a drop in the bucket.

The problem with environmentalists is NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) and BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone): any time a new natural gas or propane depot is proposed (cleaner than oil, coal, gasoline, etc.) the enviro-nazis oppose it. Any time a solar farm is propoosed, enviro-nazis opppose it because it might upset a scorpion or two and a family of rattlesnakes. Any time a wind farm is proposed (such as Cape Wind/Nantucket Sound Wind Farm), enviro-nazis oppose it and block it for years on the ground that someday some stupid seagull might fly into it and die. Any time a clean nuclear plant is proposed, it gets knocked down. At the same time, these self-same environazis want us to stop using oil NOW, and to use alternative energy.

Therein lies the problem: we WANT to use alternative energy, and any time anyone tries to actually provide it on any kind of practical, usable scale that will make a difference, the same idiots who want us off oil NOW oppose the clean energy with NIMBY and BANANA. I'm sorry, but there is no magic pixie dust. Want us off oil? Guess what? Without magic pixie dust, we need to build nukes, wind, and solar power plants in order to get off oil. You cannot have one without the other, and if the only alternative is that we go back to living in tents, I suggest that the Al Gore types and all of his disciples take the lead and live a couple of harsh winters in tents, then if it works out well for you, we'll all follow your example.

Until then, either stuff it, or come to some sort of happy medium and work with conservationists who actually want to limit the use of oil and get us to that point by implementing the technologies that can replace it.

I'm sick and tired of NIMBYs being called environmentalists. Every time someone has an opinion an environmentalist might also have, people start bitching about environmentalists. If you don't see the difference there then you need to stop and figure it out before posting again.

Further, "environmentalist" is a broad category. The thing that unifies them (us) is that they want the biosphere to retain its ecological diversity, abundance and capability for supporting complex life (these three are interrelated).

Well, we're talking about North Africa, not the Middle East. Sure, they're close to each other geographically, but the political realities are different. Further, the direct foreign investment of this sort of "infrastructure" could be beneficial. The influx of money should raise the standard of living those countries and it might encourage a different sort of economic growth than what we've seen in economies fueled by petrodollars.

I completely agree. Spain is investing quite a bit in Morocco lately, for it is very close geographically and the costs are quite low. Not as low as in China but again, it's easier to work with people who at least uses the same alphabet as you do. In Morocco they speak French but many people speak Spanish too. It seems that we will finally have the kind of mutually beneficial relationship with them as other countries have managed to have with their former colonies. We are only a century behind or so.

True, Arabic is the official language, but I have yet to meet a Moroccan not speaking French.As per Wikipedia, it's the country's "second unofficial language": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morocco#Languages

Unlike some other "educated" countries, the people of Morocco have realized that some people in other countries speak different languages, and that you can't overcome this by simply talking at them with an increased volume and decreased speed.

The influx of money should raise the standard of living [in] those countries and it might encourage a different sort of economic growth than what we've seen in economies fueled by petrodollars.

What growth? Countries which get essentially "free money" often have shrinking economies [wikipedia.org] . Whether they get paid for oil underground or sun shining on the ground doesn't matter. They don't become poor, but they end up importing everything because local labor is so unattractive an expensive. See Dutch disease etc., this was just recently discussed on/. in relation to the "trillion dollar ore miracle" in Afghanistan.

And these solar arrays are probably built by non-local companies, so no local know-how is rewarded. Then the states just get monetary compensation for maintenance work, not for fabricating anything. Now how to build a local economy.

There is a difference. We make CPUs, airliners, jet engines, cars, roads, houses, drugs, and so one. I do agree that we really need to start making even more stuff but we do make a lot of big ticket high complexity items.

Yeah I mean I would never travel to California, Venezuela is just far too much of a political hotbed.

Indeed.

To suggest that all of North Africa is unstable is just retarded. Morocco, Tunesia, Egypt are all stable countries. Ok, perhaps their democracy is about as fair as the American one (you get only 1 choice) but for the rest they're peaceful countries with a smaller average prison population than the USA and fantastic tourist attractions and destinations... and a very friendly and hospitable population.

The Algerian and Lybian governments are perhaps not too popular with the Western countries - but those

...for yet another way to be dependent on this already-unstable region of the world which already has a choke-hold on energy production.

Depends on how you tackle the situation. One of the main reasons why we have such a strained relationship with the Middle East the fact that we have messed with the people in that region in a hostile way for a long time: Crusades, Imperialism etc - and Israel, of course. Perhaps we could approach it somewhat more diplomatically this time?

Handled the right way, this could mean that an impoverished region of Africa can finally get a chance to develop.

They definitely have a large demographic momentum (many young people) but the total fertility rates (TFR) are in free fall in some of the countries. Here are some current numbers from the CIA World Factbook:

As you can see the largest North African countries are now barely reproducing (although their populations will continue to grow for a generation or so due to the shape of their population pyramids). Their po

I hear the atlantic is quite around the corner when you're in certain places in the Sahara. Also, they need a lot of drinking water over there. So... seawater, heat, molten salt, drinking water.. No. I can't seem to think of a solution.

So you store it... 16story batteries... 5 miles of capacitor banks, something. Of course that won't ever happen, but neither will the Sahara be powering the world (pretty sure be some hefty loss in the transmission to New Zealand or Hawaii, plus logistics involved in setting it up/running it, would put it well past feasible).

Just an attempt at selling the potential there: 'of COURSE this isn't a waste of cash, we're tapping just an iota of the power that is the desert sun! even if we screw up massively w

I don't think anyone literally expects a single 1% area to be covered by solar panels and for this to be the sole worldwide energy generator. It was more an indication of the amount of energy hitting the earth's surface and what little amount of this energy we use.

At least the minister's response quoted in the article is positive. The summary butchered it:

"This is a good question but not a question to destroy our project," Oettinger said. "This question must be answered by a good answer and so we need ways to ensure that our import of electricity is from renewables."

"Some environmental groups". In other words, a couple of total fucking nutcases. Just like we have nutcases to criticize every other initiative, idea, concept etc.

Some idiot shouting is not what is noteworthy. What is, however, is that de media (and yes, that includes you kdawson) give them credence in order to stir up controversy and rack up the hits to score more ad income.

Might I suggest kdawson gets a new job where he tries to rickroll us once a day and otherwise loses all privileges? The end result wou

They are not nutcases. They are powerful pressure groups, able to influence the policies that rule your life. Don't dismiss this as the work of discredited extremists, what government minister even has meetings with crazy extremists?

Little anecdote: in the Netherlands a number of us want to build a second nuclear powerplant. Obviously greenpeace is opposed to this, so they staged a protest by climbing up the old city hall(medieval building) and raising a giant flag. Then they sat there for a couple of hours.

You know what this stunt got them? A 3 line article in the newspaper featuring a comment from a local police officer who in passing by had commented on the fact that they had attached the

By posing the question, they may be able to get some verification that the imported power actually is from renewable energy sources. Given how BP has been acting, I would not trust any power company longer than I could throw them, so some sort of semi-independent verification would be nice. Furthermore, the EU has signed the Kyoto accords, and is required to lower its CO2 emmisions. If it gets difficult to attain this goal, I would not put it past the EU and national governments to import energy from other

The environmentalists are right to ask the question, there are antecedents [theecologist.org]. In Europe (Spain in particular [elmundo.es](Spanish)) there have already have cases of diesel power being passed off as renewable energy - they got caught only because they were arrogant enough to pass it off as solar energy... at night. If they had not been so greedy we would still be non the wiser, and the company get's to both sell dirty power AND collect on renewable energy subsidies. What's worse, nobody in the upper management or local politics has yet been prosecuted - halls of power protecting their own it would appear.

So the question the environmentalists are calling it right. If this happens IN Europe, what can we expect when it's over in Africa unless there are strict transparent controls put in place? One thing is certain: There will always be Companies that will do almost anything to make a buck - we need to ask and address how the system can be abused before we invest public funds into it.

This comes a lot to the way news reports work. "Environmentalist" is such a wide label that you will find people wearing it opposed to almost any possible action. So when a tech news happen, it has become a duty for journalists to find a "silly environmentalist" who opposes it. Too bad they don't mention the legion of environmentalists who give a big thumbs up to such a program. I mean, there are green political parties (which are a political force in Europe) who applaud that. But nevermind. Environmentalis

And how did you conclude that the environmentalists are against it just because they asked how you ensure that the energy does actually come from renewable resources. Did you read a call to "ban the cables" anywhere? No.

The Energy Commissioner said that it was a good question, and he is right. You don't just lay down a cable and just hope that the power sent through it is renewable. You need to put procedures in place to guarantee it, otherwise you have just wasted your money.

The problem with that argument is that the group of people that might be considered to be in the set "Environmentalist" is itself a collection of sub-sets, each of which has their own preferred solutions and solutions they oppose. Given the number of people in the set "Environmentalist" the chances are that for every single alternative technology power supply there are going to be people that oppose it loudly enough to get reported in the media.

Some environmental groups have warned these cables could be used instead to import non-renewable electricity from coal- and gas-fired power stations in north Africa.

OK, who wants to get up and defend this one?

I will, because it's a damm good question.

Here we are, trying to do something positive, and environmentalists come down hard on it.

The makers of Thalidomide [wikipedia.org] thought they were trying to do something positive as well I bet. As the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. It's not enough to try and do something positive, one must be sure one is actually doing something positive. This is the real world where real actions have real consequences, not your first grade classroom where everybody gets a trophy for trying - even if they don't actually accomplish anything.

It's easy (and childish) to simply dismiss the concerns as being from "those [obstructive] environmentalists, it's much harder to honestly answer the question.

It's almost as if environmentalists don't want any development whatsoever to happen from now until the end of humanity.

It's almost as if you didn't actually read their statement or bother to attempt to understand it. They didn't say "lets not build this", they said "lets make sure this accomplishes it's stated goal".

Yeah, I thought that. But then I thought a bit more and - is it that hard to believe the idea that politicians might sell a massive investment in cabling to the taxpayers by saying "Oh, it's for a brand new green energy thingy" and then let their friendly lobbying oil companies use the link when the green power plans "happen" to fall through? I'm not accusing the politicians of trying to pull the wool over our eyes in this instance, just asserting that it's generally in their nature. If someone doesn't k

Even if coal-fired energy was sold through those cables, who cares? The environmentalists don't. They care that it does the stated goal of transferring renewable energy and want to make sure that, if connected to a non-renewable grid, some bozo doesn't suddenly decide to shitcan the solar arrays.

If it never connects to a non-renewable grid, great. In that case, the environmental groups are incorrect. But from the response, it sounds like the project is intentionally connecting to a non-renewable grid to

How is it positive to spend a lot of money on an undersea cable to get power from coal and gas fired power plants in North Africa? It seems like it would be much more cost-efficient to just build the plants in Europe.

Dust build up and sandstorms are likely to cause more damage than petty thieves and t'rr'rists. Also less easy to solve.

C&C style tesla towers powered by the sea of solar panels could stop trespassers. A Saharan Storm, however, doesn't fear death; and the only thing that doesn't fear a Saharan storm is a saharan... wait, where am I? Too much spice.

One earthquake or well placed nuke and all their expensive energy modifications go dark

Earthquake? I think they may even have thought about that - there are ways to secure against them, you know. As for nuclear weapons, that would be a very good incentive to make friends with people in the region, don't you think?

Anyway, it is not as if the Sahara is "just one place"; it is actually 9,400,000 km2 (according to Wikipedia) compared to the US' 9,826,675 km2.